Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Public Talk 30th November, 1947 | Madras, India

Because all our pleasures are mechanical, sex has become the only pleasure which is creative. Religion has become mechanical. Authority has bound us mentally and emotionally and therefore you are blinded and blocked there. There is no creativeness in thinking about God. Is there? You do not find joy in thinking about God? It gives you emotional satisfaction. One has to be happy and joyous, which is surely the highest form of religion. But merely following authority, tradition, going to the temple, repeating mantrams, attending to the priests, surely that is not religion. That is mere repetition and what happens if you repeat? Your mind becomes dull, there is no joy in it. So emotionally and intellectually we are starved. We are merely repeating. This is a fact. I am not saying something extraordinary. Emotionally we are machines carrying out a routine and the machine is not creative. A man may have habits but thereby he is not creative. He may recite mantrams, practise japams and all the rest of that nonsense, but he is not creative. Such a repetitive man has merely destroyed his clarity, the power to think, the power to perceive, to understand.

Tags: authority, creativity

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An authority seasoned through the mists of time becomes invulnerable, and then man accepts that authority as being final.
When you begin to perceive that influence or authority in any form, gross or subtle. must pervert thought, then the mind, in freeing itself from its limitations, is capable of true discernment.
To understand the deep significance of authority and compulsion. you need very delicate and careful thought.
To discuss and intellectually discover what is intelligence would be, I feel, a waste of time and energy, for that would not lift the burden of ignorance and illusion.
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Authority is pernicious, not only the authority imposed by another, but also that which is unconsciously developed through the accumulation of self-protective memories, the authority of the ego.
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One might ask what are you doing, are you not a sign post?
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We are going to examine and understand this problem together, which means you are not going to become the listeners, the observers, and I the one who answers.
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Conflict strengthens self-protective capacities, conflict is the substance on which the self thrives.
When do you feel that creative overpowering ecstasy? Only when all conflict has ceased, only when the self is absent, only when there is complete tranquillity.
Creative, expectant emptiness is not brought about by will or by desire; it comes into being when conflict of the self ceases.
In moments of great creativity, in moments of great beauty, there is utter tranquillity; in these moments there is complete absence of the self with all its conflicts;
A truth that is repeated ceases to be a truth.
Our responses are conditioned according to the pattern of society, whether it is Eastern or Western, religious or materialistic.
If you merely agree with me, you will make me your authority; but if you understand, you will cease to worship authority, because the problem is not a matter of substituting one authority for another, but of being creative.
Obviously, the problem is not how to be creative all the time, but why there is insensitivity.
If there is passive awareness in which the dullness is perceived, and immediately after the perception there is a period of silence without condemnation, then in that period of observation without condemnation, the cause of insensitivity, of dullness, is revealed.